Explained: Formal job growth rate declines even as GDP is poised for higher growth

According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) latest data, new additions to the formal sector employment declined in October. Writes ETV Bharat's Krishnanand

New Delhi:The latest official data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) on Friday showed that new additions to the formal sector employment declined in the month of October. These three data sets are Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) Scheme, Employees' State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) and National Pension Scheme (NPS).

The decline in new subscriptions to these three formal schemes comes at a time when Indian economy is poised to register one of the fastest economic growth rate among the major economies as the Reserve Bank of India has estimated that India would achieve a GDP growth rate of 6.5 percent in the current financial year ending in March 2024 while International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimate suggest that the country would achieve a growth rate of 6.3 percent. The IMF has projected China's GDP growth rate for the current year to be at around 5.4 percent.

Since April 2018, the government has been bringing out the employment related statistics in the formal sector covering the period September 2017 onwards, using information on the number of subscribers who have subscribed under three major schemes, namely the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) Scheme, the Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) Scheme and the National Pension Scheme (NPS). The numbers of subscribers are from various sources and according to the ministry officials there are elements of overlap also.

The comprehensive data released Friday showed that the number of new subscribers to the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) declined for the third straight month in October to just over 7.72 lakh additions (7,72,084). In September this year, the new additions to the scheme were pegged at close to 9.27 lakhs (9,26,934). This is the lowest addition of new subscribers this year as per the preliminary data released by the statistics ministry.

Secondly, another important data set – new additions to the Employees' State Insurance Corporation also declined below 13 lakh in October, which is the lowest number of new additions to the scheme in the last eight months. The data showed that the subscriptions to the ESIC scheme have been on a decline since the last five months which shows the weak demand in formal employment sector.

The third data set relates to the National Pension Scheme (NPS), which was launched in 2004 as the New Pension Scheme for public sector employees but was later expanded to the private sector as well, is not doing well. The latest NPS new addition data showed that new subscriptions in the scheme in the month of October declined by over 3 per cent at nearly 71,000 new subscribers in comparison with addition of over 73,300 new subscribers in September this year.

The data showed that while the new additions to EPF declined nearly 17 percent in the month of October, the decline in new additions to the ESIC scheme was 9 per cent and for the NPS it was 3.2 per cent in comparison with the new additions in the previous month. New additions to the NPS scheme hit the four months low in October this year.